Page 14 of Don't Let Me Go
I roll my eyes. “You’re thirty-eight.”
“I’m thirty-four!” she barks, swatting my shoulder with her magazine.
“Ow! Okay! Sorry!”
“Thirty-eight.” She snorts. “You’re lucky you’re so good-looking, kiddo, because your manners are crap.”
For a second, I think I’m off the hook. Then Aunt Rachel fixes me with one of her sideways glances. “So what’s going on? Why don’t you want to hang out with Duy? Did you not have a good time tonight?”
“It’s not that,” I say.
Despite my initial hesitation about going out, I am glad I went. After Riley and I met back up with his friends, we spent the rest of the night hopping from ride to ride and playing games. Duy lost half an hour (and a ridiculous amount of money) to a ring toss trying to win a giant purple octopus; Audrey managed to get banned from the bumper cars for “reckless driving”; and Tala ate four funnel cakes, after which she complained of a stomachache that she insisted was completely unrelated.
It was a bizarre and ridiculous evening. But despite my current “situation,” I think I actually enjoyed myself. And that’s the problem.
“Did you not get along with Duy?” my aunt presses when I continueto stare down at the bottle of Coke in my lap. “I know they’re a bit different from the kids you’re used to.”
“No, I like Duy and their friends. They were weird but interesting. Especially this one guy, Riley. He made me laugh. They all did.”
“Okay?.?.?.?so you hung out with funny, interesting people and had a good time. I totally understand why you wouldn’t want to dothatagain.”
“Come on, Aunt Rach. I’m only gonna be here in Orlando for, what, a year? There’s no point in making friends.”
“A year’s a long time to go it alone, kiddo.”
“I’ll survive.”
Aunt Rachel’s mouth twists into a frown. “So that’s the plan? You’re going to spend your senior year alone with no one for company other than your insanely cool, vibrantly young, breathtakingly glamorous aunt?”
“I thought you were a senile crone?”
Aunt Rachel swats me with the magazine again.
“Ow!”
“Jackson, you can’t spend the rest of your life hiding in your room,” she says, her tone once more tinged with concern.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I protest. Even though, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m doing.
My aunt shakes her head, then takes my chin in her hand and forces me to meet her dark brown eyes. “Look, kiddo, I know you’ve had a rough couple of months, and I fully support your decision to move in with me and make a fresh start. But for the past week, all I’ve seen you do is play video games and eat microwaved Hot Pockets. You can’t keep hiding from the world.”
“I’m not,” I insist. “I’m just?.?.?.?taking a pause.”
Aunt Rachel lets go of my face and sighs. “Sometimes, Jackson, westumble in life. And you can let that stumble define who you are and sabotage any chance of future happiness, or you can try to move past it and build a new life for yourself in a new city with new friends who are funny and smart and just the right amount of weird. I personally think the latter is the better option, but I will support you no matter what you do because you are my nephew and I love you and I just want to see you happy. You know you’re allowed to be happy, right?”
I’m not sure that’s true, but I appreciate her saying it.
“I know,” I tell her. “I’ll try.”
Aunt Rachel nods and smiles. “That’s all any of us can do.”
Chapter 6
Riley
When I get home from the carnival, Dad is waiting for me in the living room practically vibrating with excitement, like a kid on Christmas morning.
“What do you think?” he asks, his eyes twinkling behind his thick glasses as he thrusts a cobalt-blue suit in my face. I’m starting my internship at the ACLU in a week, and this suit is obviously intended as a bribe to get me amped about a long summer of paralegal work.
